(The writer is a former Los
Angeles city attorney candidate, former special assistant city attorney to
Carmen Trutanich, and is currently a Los Angeles County deputy district
attorney. The opinions expressed by him are personal and not those of the Los
Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.)

The
responses of the City Attorney’s Office and the Department of Building and
Safety regarding the legality of City Atorney Carmen Trutanich’s Ventura
Boulevard billboards (“Leftover Trutanich Signs Not Illegal Advertisements,
Officials Say,” MetNews, Friday, Aug. 26, 2011) not only revealed apparent
inconsistencies in the enforcement of the city’s billboard laws, but also
displayed an alarming lack of accountability and an equally shocking arrogance
of office.

The Los Angeles
Dragnet blog questioned Trutanich’s four billboards outside his former campaign
headquarters were “off-site” signs that violated Trutanich’s own law banning
off-site signs. An off-site sign promotes an activity taking place away from
the location of the sign. We see them all over Los Angeles and they are part of
a multi-billion dollar industry that the city has struggled to contain. While
Trutanich ran his campaign to become city attorney, his billboards outside his
Ventura Boulevard headquarters were lawful “on-site” signs, but when Trutanich
moved to City Hall in July 2009, the signs remained outside his shuttered
headquarters, hence the question: are they now illegal off-site signs?

Photos courtesy of losangelesdragnet.blogspot.com

Four billboards by Trutanich's former campaign headquarters on Ventura Boulevard are still on display.

Those
familiar with the city’s troubled history of billboard regulation need no
reminding that inconsistencies in the city’s enforcement of its own law led to
the farcical legal quagmire resulting, at one time, in the city being enjoined
from enforcing its own billboard laws. This was a legal mess that Trutanich inherited,
and his solution was a citywide ban on any new off-site signs.

Given
that Trutanich has frequently hailed his own successes in reigning in off-site
signs, it surely provides all the more reason for Trutanich to dispel any
suggestion that he is in violation of his own law. But far from answering the
question, or better yet, removing the offending billboards and apologizing for
his error, Trutanich did not provide a response personally—perhaps he was too
busy on the campaign trail. Instead, Trutanich’s deputy attempted to respond.

To
say that the chief
deputy city attorney’s response to the illegal off-site sign allegation was a
jaw-dropper would be an understatement. “The determination of the signs’
legality is not one that is made by his [the City Attorney’s] office” the
deputy said, adding that he would “defer to any other department or office
to make that decision.”

In
other words, “It’s not my job to determine whether a sign is legal or not.”
That’s quite a contradiction as, in recent times, the City Attorney’s Office
has not been shy to condemn illegal signs—few can forget Trutanich grabbing
national headlines for throwing Los Angeles businessman Kayvan Setareh in jail
on $1M bail for daring to place a supergraphic sign on his office building
during the Oscars ceremony in 2010.

Equally,
when AEG sought permits for signs at their new Regency Cinema complex at LA
Live, it was Truanich who personally threatened to arrest Councilmember Jan
Perry and the Building and Safety officials who wanted to issue the permits.
The city attorney, clearly, was not willing to “defer” to anyone who
disagreed with his “determination of the signs’ legality” on those
occasions, so the sudden volte face when his own signs come under
unwelcome scrutiny appears to be hypocritical, to say the least.

Frankly,
it ridiculous for the City Attorney’s Office to suggest that it does not
determine the legality of billboards and signs. The determination the legality
of any alleged violation of the Los Angeles Municipal Code is surely one of the
core functions of the City Attorney’s Office.

What
makes the Trutanich chief deputy’s statement even more disingenuous is that at
the very same time the statement was made, Trutanich personally released a
statement condemning the City of Santa Monica’s plans to install digital
billboards on their buses.

But
if Trutanich’s inability to account for what may be an inconvenient truth
about the legality of his Ventura Boulevard billboards, the statements of City of
Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety Inspector Luke Zamparini were
even more incredulous.

Zamparini
said that he had “viewed pictures of the signs through Google Maps,” and
“did not consider them to be illegal offsite advertising,” adding that he
saw “a vinyl sign that’s just stuck up there like a ‘Grand Opening’ or
‘Going Out of Business’ sign occasionally used by businesses.” Of course he
could have looked at the photos published on the Dragnet, but even looking at
the pictures on Google Maps, Trutanich’s billboards do not look anything like
vinyl signs. Who is he trying to fool?

Let
us not forget that if Trutanich succeeds in forcing his Administrative Code
Enforcement (“ACE”) Program through Council, the Department of Building and
Safety will be the lead agency issuing the revenue-generating “Administrative
Citations” that Trutanich has promised will solve the city’s budget problems.
Trutanich has touted the ACE Program as a self-funding scheme whereby residents
can be swiftly fined for code violations without using the criminal court
system, “just like a traffic ticket” he told Kevin James in a recent interview.

Is
Zamparini’s woefully inaccurate and shamefully inadequate investigation of
Trutanich’s billboards representative of the kind of evidence that will be used
to issue those money-making administrative citations? Or is this just a case of
Zamparini closing ranks and being unwilling to apply the law equally when
Trutanich’s signs are questioned?

But
beyond the issue of any favoritism towards Trutanich, Zamparini made statements
that completely contradict the law as it has been applied to others. A “temporary
sign like that doesn’t require a permit,” Zamparini said. Really? That will
come as welcome news to World Wide Rush, CBS Outdoors and any number of other
billboard bandits who can now simply claim the “Zamparini temporary sign
defense.”

Of
course, the Zamparini defense wasn’t available to Kayvan Setareh, was
it? His “How to train your dragon” movie sign was only intended to be displayed
during the Oscars ceremony—but that’s not temporary enough. However, Trutanich’s
temporary signs have been displayed for over two years and are just fine
according to Zamparini. In fairness, Zamparini did say that Trutanich’s
billboards “can’t stay up forever,” but he did not indicate how much
more than two years is “forever.” Indefinitely would seem to be the
answer, or at least long enough to help Trutanich’s name recognition in his
campaign to become district attorney. Either way it is not an answer that gives
any degree of confidence in the ability of the City Attorney or the Department
of Building and Safety to enforce the law in the fair and evenhanded manner
that Los Angelenos are entitled to expect.

The
billboard industry is a billion dollar a year money maker both for those who
follow the rules and for those who break them. Zamparini’s and Trutanich’s
statements will surely be used by those who want to break the rules and bring
back the billboard blight that Los Angelenos thought was finally under control.
It is beyond ironic that Trutanich’s own vanity and blatant hypocrisy could
undermine the efforts that have been made to regulate this industry. Of course,
by the time the next wave of billboard blight hits Los Angeles, Trutanich plans
to have moved on to higher office and it won’t be his problem.

Following Trutanich's election, billboard was altered to remove the word "for."

One
cannot escape the inevitable conclusion that Trutanich appears to have already
checked out and is ready to move on, confident that swelling a campaign war
chest is more important than addressing the business of his office, let alone
disabusing the appearance of impropriety.

Mr.
Trutanich, for the sake of Los Angeles, take down those billboards.